What happens when you have a zombie outbreak in the middle of an underwater cruise? Welcome to This Gilded Abyss by Rebecca Thorne. With as much as I’m used to the cozy feelings of the Tea series, Thorne’s newest series is a refreshing change of pace. You really get the feeling of being cramped with no escape as chaos erupts around our characters.
Of the original trilogy, this one felt the weakest for me. Not because it’s poorly written. but because of the sharp pivot the story takes. There’s still plenty of battles, gut punches, and betrayals, but perhaps the biggest betrayal is to the reader. This may be the closest that I go to giving spoilers in one of my reviews.
Golden Son takes everything Red Rising set up and cranks it up to 11. After a bit of a time jump, this middle-book dives headfirst into interplanetary politics, betrayal, and warfare. The scope is bigger, the stakes higher, and the betrayals hit harder.
The Hunger Games meets Gurren Lagann meets Game of Thrones. That’s probably the best way I can describe Red Rising by Pierce Brown.
There’s a certain draw to a narrative that features the villain as the protagonist. When this perspective is done well, it really shines, and V.E. Schwab doesn’t miss with this one. At it’s core, Vicious is a story about the razor-thin line between ambition and obsession. About pursuing brilliance even when it comes at a monstrous price.
I didn’t know that it was possible to find a book so tailor-made for me. All Systems Red by Martha Wells is the first entry in the Murderbot Diaries series and features an AuDHD coded SecUnit robot that is programmed for…security…Murderbot is just its chosen name.
Silver Nitrate by Silvia Moreno-Garcia is a haunting dive into cursed film, a skin-crawling horror romp that will leave you unsettled.
Blood, rage, and ruin. A Dowry of Blood by S.T. Gibson is a love letter written like the kind of poetry that makes you stop mid-page just to breathe it in. Told through the eyes of Constanta, one of Dracula’s wives, it’s less a gothic romance and more the long, unflinching memoir of someone who’s survived the most intoxicating and destructive relationship of their life.
At its core, this is a vampire novel—but not your typical, cookie-cutter vamps. SMG pulls from Mexico’s indigenous mythologies to create a gritty, bloody underworld that feels alive in a way most supernatural urban settings don’t.
It costs you nothing to be kind. That’s perhaps what’s at the core of Tamsyn Muir’s third entry in the Locked Tomb series, Nona the Ninth.